This invention relates generally to a system and method for managing the workflow associated with a story and in particular to a system and method for managing the workflow associated with the preparation, editing and creation of a story.
In a typical environment in which a story may be created, such as a newspaper, a television newscast, a cable service, or a company who is generating success stories associated with their products, the management of the workflow associated with the creation of a story is very difficult. In particular, the creation of a story may include receiving a submission for a new story, rating the story idea, checking the story""s facts, writing the story and preparing the story for publishing. In the past, each step of the process was completed by one or more different people, but no one was easily able to monitor the entire story workflow process. Therefore, it is difficult to ensure that the entire process was completed correctly and that each step was in fact completed. It is also difficult for a person trying to manage the story workflow to ensure each step is being completed in a timely manner. It is also difficult to ensure that each story being generated is factually accurate. Finally, it is also difficult to implement a quality control process due to the large number of steps in the process and the large number of people involved in the process.
For a company which generates success stories about its products, the story workflow management process is equally complex. In this process, it is necessary to screen incoming success story submissions to remove the unwanted submissions. Then, it is necessary to check the submission""s accuracy and, if the submission is accurate, the writing of the success story must be assigned to a writer. The writer then has to check all the facts (i.e. find the person, get the story and quotes, get the appropriate releases, get images and other media as required, have those media prepared for publication, etc.) and get everybody to sign off on what""s been done. Once the writer has completed the story, it must be edited and prepared for publication. In a typical success story creation process within a corporation, the submissions for success stories are difficult to obtain. In particular, it is typically necessary to disturb the salespeople in order to generate any leads for success stories since the salespeople have the most contact with people who may have success stories with the products made by the corporation. Often, the person administering the success story creation process must provide the salespeople with an incentive, such as a cash bonus or some other material prize, in order to receive any success story leads or submissions. The management of the success story process is often done manually which is a daunting task.
Corporations which have success story programs also find it immensely difficult to ensure that stories are currently maintained up to date and accurate (i.e., the featured party is still using the same products and the same people are still with the company, etc.). It is staggering to discover how many of the success stories that a company uses are actually obsolete. In addition, because the success story creation work is done in an artisanal manner right now, it""s also difficult, time consuming (i.e. expensive) to get the story done in multiple media (print, web) in a useful time frame. It is also extremely difficult for companies to ensure that their people can quickly find a relevant success story when they need one. In addition, because the stories usually take the months from inception to delivery of a usable story, their shelf life (before they become obsolete) is much shorter.
Many companies already have a success story program. In one type of success story program, one or more people in the organization are assigned to find and develop leads and turn them into stories. These people usually have one or more other assigned tasks which are their primary responsibility, and usually lack training in the skills required to do success stories. The results of this type of success story program is slow story turnaround, poor quality stories, few and often outdated stories, poor legal documentation and high hidden costs. The stories are also generally handled at a divisional level and therefore never centralized in a useful manner. In another success story program, the persons assigned to find and develop leads and turn them into stories bring in one or more outside contractors, such as individual freelancer writers, PR companies, or the like. Companies consistently find the turnaround slow, quality very variable and cost high because the process always tends to be that of a craftsman working on a very limited number of leads assigned by the project manager at the company. As a result, there is often very little filtering of mediocre stories since there are not enough story submissions.
It is desirable, however, to provide a story workflow management system which automatically tracks each step of the story creation process and documents the steps as the story is being written regardless of who or how many people complete a particular task and therefore permits the story workflow to be more easily controlled. It is also desirable to provide a story workflow management system which gathers story submissions from the end users of the products and provides a mechanism for processing the story submissions that may be easily integrated into a corporation""s network. Thus, it is desirable to provide a story workflow management system which avoid the above problems with the typical story creation process and it is to this end that the present invention is directed.
Thus, in accordance with the invention, a story workflow management system and method are provided in which each step of the story creation process from initial lead generation to final publication of the story is tracked so that the entire story creation process is more easily managed. The system integrates the various story creation processes into a single controlled process. The system permits the traditional story generation process to be automated and the speed of the story generation increased while the quality control for the stories is also increased. The integrated system provides various advantages to the story creation process including reduced costs to create a story, increased speed with which a story is prepared, and various features not typically available to a story writer. The system is also robust, compatible with other existing systems and networks and it very flexible.
In the success story embodiment, the end users may submit story submissions to the system about particular products and the system may provide a mechanism for processing the incoming submissions ideas and leads in an efficient manner. The system may store unformatted story contents so that the published story may be quickly published automatically by the system in a variety of different formats, such as a hardcopy of the story, a Postscript Display Format (PDF) file and the like. The system may also permit leads for story submissions to be tracked so that a lead for a new story is not lost. The system also may be easily integrated into a corporate Intranet computer network and with other prior legacy databases. The system may also gather together the success stories spread throughout a corporation.
The system also allows for more time and space flexibility for everybody in the process since the story creation is not constrained by location or time (i.e., everybody can work on it from anywhere at any time). The system also reduces the dependency on any one individual because this is a formalized system and the steps are defined and documented so that less skilled people may accomplish the same tasks typically completed by a more skilled person. The system is also easy scaled in size to increase the number of stories being created. The system also accumulates a central knowledge base for continually improving the story creation process based on ongoing experiences. In addition, since the system may track visitors through the integrated web system, the system may track the visitor""s interests and preferences and provide feedback to our customers which allows them to tune their marketing and products. The system permits a large number of story submissions to be generated so that the best stories (high quality control) may be picked from the submissions to create the stories.
In more detail, the system may include a server which is executing one or more software applications which implement various steps in the story creation process. The software applications may include a submission application for managing the story submission process, a writer application for managing the story rating and story creation process, an administrative application for controlling the access to the system and editorial review as well as managing and maintaining the data contained in the database space,and a publisher application for generating a published story in a variety of different formats. The system may also include a database for storing information about each submission and each completed story. The administrative system provides an overview of the system for an administrator, allows control of certain system data, controls the user permissions to access particular data so that different people who access the system may be able to view different information about the stories being prepared based on the privileges given to the person. For example, a particular corporation may view only the stories pertaining to the particular corporation while the system may actually be generating stories for multiple corporations. To control the access to the information, the system may include an access database containing information about the web pages available in the system. The database may also include each different access level in the system and what web pages each different user may view. For example, a person submitting a story may only access and view the submission web pages while an editor may view all of the current stories being processed and their progress towards completion (see FIGS. 4A and 4B for example).
The system may have a user interface which is generated to provide users of the system, including story submitters, story researchers, story writers, story editors, system administrators, system customers, sub-contractors, partners and others, with guidance through the process. In one World Wide Web (WWW) based embodiment, one or more web pages are generated as the user interface. The system may generate these user interface screens dynamically as each user accesses the system. In particular, each user accessing the system may have a predetermined security level based on the user""s intended use of the system. Based on the predetermined security level, pieces of data are retrieved from a database and the user interface for the particular user is generated based on the retrieved data. Thus, each user only views the data in the user interface screen which the user has the privileges to view to provide security for the stories being generated. Additionally, the user interface screens in the system are customizable to integrate seamlessly with the current look and feel of a customer""s web site, for example, so that not only can different content be made accessible to different users based on the access privileges, but different versions of the same content as well as different presentations of that content may be provided to different users.
To generate leads for possible stories, the system may receive a submission form through the submission application system. In addition, the system may include a pre-qualification system for finding and generating leads and following up on the leads to have them pre-qualified (i.e., determine that the story is valuable and should be created. Once the stories have passed this pre-qualification, the system requests a submission from the featured person, and this submission is matched with the data from the pre-qualification and tracking system. This integrated pre-qualification and tracking system is valuable to clients because it provides their project managers with a simple method of generating leads and ensuring that leads don""t fall through the cracks once they have signed off on them.